Puerto Vallarta

On Feb 20 I have to be in Puerto Vallarta (PV)to met Sandi (Sandi with an I). It's very difficult to estimate how long it will take you to get from one point to another so we decided to push hard up the coast and reach Manzinillo in one day. The ride had all the usual stuff and the town was nothing to speak of. We left the next day for PV. The following is a record of that day.....

Well, my druges. Up the wally wonk we stopped by the milk bar for a bit of the ole stomp and wonk. Welly, well, well.

Sorry about that, I watched "A Clockwork Orange" the other night, in English with Spanish subtitles. The subtitles don't do the movie justice. Anyway it's been stuck in my head. We should be free of the "Orange speak" from this point forward.

We rolled out a little later than usual but we were thinking that we would stop where ever we wanted to and camp on the beach or if we felt like it we would push on to PV. Alfred's friend hooked us up with an apartment for free so obviously that sounded good.

The beginning of our ride took us through banana and palm plantations which are pretty in their own right. The road was fairly straight for the first hour and a half with gentle curves leading upwards. After that it was a roller coaster of twisties. These were pretty intense as we attacked each curve as if were in a moto gp race. The twisties cause you to concentrate on nothing but the road. After an hour of this I was mentally fatigued and needed a break. I spied one of the few safe places to pull off and motioned Alfred to follow. Getting off the bike I realized what an amazing view was in front of us. We were hundreds of feet above the ocean and beach below. It may have been 700 or 800 feet below but one thing was for sure, it was a straight drop down. To the left you could see the cliffs and below them the beach and surf. We took many pictures which I'll post on our return. (I've learned that image management while on the road is too time consuming and sometimes impossible. )From that point the twisties smoothed out and we ran into a fairly straight road for another two hours. It was nice to relax for a change. On straight roads I can think about anything and usually come to conclusions and solve problems much more quickly than back at home.

We stopped for lunch in a no name town under a tent with a homemade sign. Our waitress' were no more than ten years of age, two of them and each a darling. It was Sabado so barbacoa was on the menu. While munching on my delicious taco of beef cheek meat, a fellow adventure rider cruised by. We were a little put off that the guy didn't bother to stop or even wave.

Back on the road the twisties began a new. Twenty minutes later we saw the same rude guy broke down by the side of the road. We couldn`t leave him stranded could we? No, we couldn't. The man introduced himself as Lone Rider on the website advrider.com, or Bob to the rest of the world. Bob told us he never saw us and certainly would've stopped as he was looking for somewhere to eat at the time. At the moment he was trying to fix a hole in his rear tube. The same one he replaced that morning. The other problem was he was out of glue so I unloaded my gear and dug out my tire repair kit. He was back on the road in about twenty minutes headed to the next town to properly inflate his fixed tire. We followed him to ensure he got there safely, then he was off again.

Ten minutes later we caught up with Bob after an amazing ride through high mountain valleys filled with diverse greenery and red soil. Bob's twice fixed tube was flat again and needed the glue and the use of my air pump. Once fixed we all rode into PV, found a hotel and then found cold beers.

That's all for now my little druges (I know I promised, but I can`t help myself), that's all for now. Come back for a bird's eye view of PV and more of them nasty tourists.